By Richard Parker
After a long dinner with a dear friend at Westside Dining, I said goodnight to my friend outside the doors of University Tower Apartments. As I stood at the shuttle stop, I looked up at UTA and imagined how my college experience could have been different if I had spent my previous years living on campus. I imagined running into friends, staying up far too late sharing life stories, walking down the hallway to ask for heartfelt advice, enduring the cheeky criticisms of my roommate for my love of country music, and experiencing what it feels like to return home after a challenging school year. I snapped out of my daydreaming when the bus stopped in front of me, doors opening to take me to my car.
Besides the many ways in which living in on-campus dormitories or close-to-campus apartment complexes can improve friendships, there are other benefits to being closer to the university.
A potential health and environmental benefit to living on or very near campus is the ability to walk or ride a bicycle to class. Students living in dormitories or within bike-riding distance can get some accidental exercise from all the walking they do around campus. In contrast, students who drive to campus must deal with the frustrations of traffic, bad drivers and road construction.
Unfortunately, I missed all of these benefits. Living on campus wasn’t a financially feasible option for me. I’m not the only commuter student to wish that living on campus was a possibility, nor am I the only commuter student struggling with finances. The decision to live on campus is a tough one for someone in my position to make, especially considering the meal plans that students living on campus are forced to pay for.
The mandatory meal plans are proposed to increase to $930 per semester for students with kitchens and $1,465 per semester for students without kitchens. Because of this, I don’t have a lot of incentive to move to campus for my senior year. Not only is this a financial consideration, it is also a moral one. Why would I want to live on the campus of a university that has somehow justified blatantly extorting money from its students? Not only students who live on campus commuters are forced to pay $175 each semester as well.
Never in my years as a child, when the goal of a college education was bludgeoned into my head, was it mentioned I would one day be forced to pay for fast food. A university is supposed to be a place of higher learning, but apparently unhealthy eating is a big part of that. There are also other barriers keeping commuter students from moving into the dorms, including rising tuition costs and diminishing options for financial aid.
This list of benefits and barriers to living on campus is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a start. There is a lot of potential for strengthening the student community of the university. This potential is left untapped due to barriers to living on campus. There are also students who have a strong desire to live among other students, but are incapable of doing so, partly because of the conditions of the times and partly because of mistakes made by the institution itself.
